the answers don't amount to much
by EleanorRigbee
Summary: She is not left waiting when he leaves, but it's not the same as saying she doesn't note the absence.  Post-Movie: Arthur/Ariadne


Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue.

A/N: I was not expecting this! This movie has eaten my brain. I've maybe spent too much time over on inception_kink though this doesn't answer any one prompt in particular. There's something with a plot fermenting on my computer but for now this is all that would come out.

i

He finds her. Maybe she should be impressed or startled, but she's neither. After all, it's his job to find out everything there is to know about a person.

He looks out of place on her front steps, his suit pristine to the point of being ridiculous. The late autumn sun is almost uncomfortably warm, but his tie is a perfect Windsor knot at the base of his neck.

She raises an eyebrow at him, because the truth is she expected something less direct, looked for him to suddenly appear in crowded cafes, at the back of lecture halls. He tilts his head to the side, almost sheepish, and she wants to laugh at the awkwardness of it all. Normal people probably call. Exchange numbers in air port terminals, share small talk and shop talk over crappy cups of coffee. There's probably even flirting—(she stops herself. They are not normal people).

"This where I invite you up?" she asks with levity that's only partly forced. She doesn't do this often, certainly never pictured doing it with him, but he smiles, and catches her off guard. "You tell me."

ii

He shows up every few months. Sometimes with jobs, mostly after he's finished one. He stops showing up on her stoop and she starts finding him in her apartment (he chides her for leaving her spare key over her doorway. Making him a copy is probably unnecessary but she does it anyway). He doesn't bring her flowers.

He picks through her books and flips through her sketches, frowns at the unorganized collection of records and CDs she keeps stored in her closest.

He restocks her pantry, and she has to wonder how much of the gesture is a courtesy and how much is the ingrained need to know the details of every situation. He makes dinner sometimes (grilled cheese on thick crusty bread, tomato soup, omelets that never stick to the pan), or invites her out (he leads her around the city as though she were the visitor and they share plates of spicy curry and soft naan, and bicker about the bill).

He sleeps on the right side of the bed, limbs heavy and tangled in hers, and she wonders if this is what it's like: being half of a whole.

She never asks how long he's staying.

iii

She learns him in pieces: a passing reference to crowded New York subways, jokes about a fish he always forgot to feed, the habitual roll of his die between his palms. His smile isn't as hard earned as she thought when she first met him but his laughter is a quiet sound, like he's reluctant to let it go.

He leaves things, like relics for her to discover: a pair of silver cuff links on her dresser, a pin striped shirt, a pair of boxers that takes up residence in her underwear drawer. There's a blue toothbrush next to hers in the cup on her sink, a heavy silver handled razor, spearmint toothpaste instead of her usual cinnamon.

It's a slow start but she doesn't mind.

iv

Somewhere, somewhere, she knows there's a dossier on her. And maybe it's a relief, knowing she'll never have to tell him about growing up with her aunt, never have to deflect questions about the father she never wanted to know and the mother she doesn't remember.

Arthur doesn't ask and she doesn't offer up the information (because he must know, she's sure of it) but sometimes she wants to. Because when she talks, he listens, unwavering attention that makes her want to tell him everything.

v

("Do you still—?" she asks once, her fingers splayed against the side of his face. Her voice is careful and she almost doesn't want the answer. Her own dreams still span the chasm between the mundane and the horrifying, but more and more often sleep feels like a terror, unfolding realities of things gone wrong. In the mornings they linger overhead like shadows, half remembered. His skin is warm against hers, and when he nods the stubble on his jaw rubs against the inside of her wrist. "Sometimes." He tells her, and she looks for his eyes in the dark, rubs her thumb along the curve of his cheek. "I don't remember them." She's surprised. She always thought he'd be a better liar.)

vi

Her life is not dependent on his comings and goings: She continues her work on her dissertation, conducts research. In her off hours she constructs dreamscapes, takes jobs though she rarely sees the spaces she creates put to use. It's a precaution, on her part, a choice to ground herself in reality before she gives herself to the immediate satisfaction of a dream.

She is not left waiting when he leaves, but it's not the same as saying she doesn't note the absence.

vii

Real dreams are never so vivid as induced sleep, but the fear cuts through her just the same:

A phone call and Cobb's voice—and when she wakes she'll recognize the abnormality of it, but not then—full of his hard edged grief. Something's gone wrong. It's as sudden as Mal's blade stabbing into her belly, as painful, the knowledge she's been left alone.

She wakes with her heart beating painfully inside her chest. Next to her, he sleeps, breathes in and out evenly and she can make out the stark relief of bruises on his face (he shook his head at her questions, "Would you believe me if I told you I walked into a door?" She didn't laugh).

Sleep leaves a bad taste in her mouth.

viii

She lets herself in and his shoes are by the door. She drops her bag on the kitchen table, finds him in her bed, sleeping, her dog eared copy of East of Eden slowly sliding off his chest. He's not one for sleeping in the afternoon, startles her into reaching into her front pocket, finds the bronze bishop warm with her own body heat (in her dreams it's always cool to the touch, only warms inside her hands).

She breathes out, toes off her own shoes at the foot of the bed, and stretches out carefully besides him. She presses her face against his shoulder, breathes in (he smells faintly of cologne and sleep and Arthur, same as always. No dream could replicate it). She makes sure to save his page before letting the book slip over the edge of the bed. It lands on the floor with a quiet thud.

"Honey, you're home," he mumbles into her hair, his lips dry when they brush over her forehead. He drifts back to sleep. She follows.

ix

He kisses her when he leaves. She presses her palm against the smooth material of his tie, resists the urge to twist it in her fingers and make him untidy. She thinks of asking him to stay (another day, another week, forever—she wants to walk out the door after him shut the door behind them) and presses her mouth against his harder to keep the words inside.

It's the closest they ever come to saying goodbye.

End


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